Born in Barcelona, Spain in 1997, the director, writer and composer Christian Avilés has a strong interest in the intersection between the worldly and the spiritual. He studied film at the Escola Superior de Cinema i Audiovisuals de Catalunya (ESCAC) and was already invited to Berlinale Shorts with his debut short film, La herida luminosa, which went on to screen at over 100 international festivals and was nominated for Best Short Film at both the European Film Awards and the Gaudí Awards. Stallion y la bola de cristal is his second short. Its themes of teenage spirituality, magic and suicide connect it to his debut feature film project which is currently in the early stages of development.
What was your starting point for „Stallion y la bola de cristal“?
Stallion comes from reflecting on repressed desire, what it means to grow up not being a straight male and learning to discipline longing, lust, and romance until they turn inward. I was interested in that state of being deeply infatuated with somebody while also recognizing the mental and physical traps that make romance and sex feel dangerous or sick. There is often a hostility and an implied violence surrounding desire between men, an imprisonment that felt like a starting point.
Rather than wallowing in that confinement, in the film I sought to reverse it, to imagine solitude as a form of power, and the mind, even spirituality, as a refuge. In the context of a rising wave of fascist conservatism in my country, I was motivated to represent meditation and introspection as a way out, while mirroring the gothic novel tradition where passions exceed and transcend one’s own body.
Do you have a favorite moment in the film? Which one and why this one in particular?
I don’t know that I have a favourite moment. I keep coming back to the middle part, after we learn he’s locked inside, when something shifts and he begins to set things in motion. He moves through the house with this desperate determination, as if following a secret logic we’re not supposed to fully grasp yet. I like the mystery that is preserved in that moment before any clear purpose is revealed, something ceremonial about it.
What do you like about the short form?
It’s such an abundant form of cinema that it leaves no space to be dishonest, there is nowhere to hide. Everything is substance, and everything is intoxicating.
*************************************************************************************
PRESS REVIEWS
Berlinale Shorts 